Jazz Articles about Miles Davis

About Miles Davis

Album Review

Miles Davis: Panthalassa: The Music Of Miles Davis 1969-1974

Read "Panthalassa: The Music Of Miles Davis 1969-1974" reviewed by Sacha O'Grady

by Sacha O'Grady
December 23, 2016

For anyone unfamiliar with his work, Bill Laswell is something of a producer's producer, who has worked with a wide array of artists ranging from John Lydon to Whitney Houston (though not on the same record one would assume). At some point Laswell miraculously managed to convince the powers that be to hand over copies of all the extant master tapes from Miles Davis's 1968 to 1974 period, arguably one of the most controversial and challenging of the trumpeter's entire ...

Top Ten List

Top Ten Musicians Who Embody Cool

by Alan Bryson
December 17, 2016

America has produced some very cool things: jazz, rock, blues, country, hot rods, Hammond organs, and electric guitars. Another one of the coolest things is the language itself, brewed in the melting pot that is America. Like jazz, blues, and rock, American English itself can't be imagined without the influence of African Americans. “Hep," “hip," “funky," “groovin,'" and “cool" are words I had assumed were coined by the early jazz musicians; however, as I dug a little deeper it seems ...

Interview

Ashley Kahn: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece

by Lazaro Vega
November 30, 2016

This interview was first published at All About Jazz in November 2000 and is part of our ongoing effort to archive pre-database material. Ashley Kahn, the author of Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece (Da Capo Press, 224 pgs.), is Music Editor at VH1, and was the primary editor of Rolling Stone: The Seventies as well as the primary contributor to Rolling Stone Jazz and Blues Album Guide. He has contributed articles to ...

Album Review

Miles Davis: Freedom Jazz Dance: The Bootleg Series Vol. 5

Read "Freedom Jazz Dance: The Bootleg Series Vol. 5" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
October 19, 2016

If ever a band of Miles Davis' deserved the high-intensity inspection/dissection represented by The Bootleg Series Vol. 5, it is his second great quintet. With that man with the horn as the great catalyst, the rapport between pianist Herbie Hancock, saxophonist/composer Wayne Shorter, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams is virtually unparalleled in the history of jazz, but to hear the machinations behind their creations here is almost as fascinating as the 'finished product' itself (liner notes rightly suggest ...

Book Review

50 Summers of Music: Montreux Jazz Festival

by Ian Patterson
August 11, 2016

50 Summers of Music: Montreux Jazz Festival Arnaud Robert 398 Pages ISBN: 978-2-84597-558-3 Montreux Jazz Festival/Editions Textuel 2016 It's neither the oldest nor the largest, but Montreux Jazz Festival is, arguably, the most famous music festival in the word. It's a notable and perhaps unlikely badge of honor for Montreux, described by Deep Purple in the early 1970s as “a sleepy little town full of old ladies and tea rooms." To ...

Hi-Res Jazz

Miles Davis: In Time, All Changes

by Mark Werlin
July 18, 2016

Considered the most influential small jazz group of the middle 1960s, the Miles Davis “Second Great Quintet" has often been imitated but never equaled. Critical consensus holds that the revival of jazz in the 1980s was inspired by the six albums the Quintet recorded from 1965-1968. But a set of particular cultural and personal dynamics shaped the Quintet's recordings in ways that are unrepeatable. Mobile Fidelity's SACD reissue series of Miles Davis' Columbia LPs shines a spotlight on these rightfully ...

Album Review

Robert Glasper, Miles Davis: Everything's Beautiful

Read "Everything's Beautiful" reviewed by Asher Wolf

by Asher Wolf
July 18, 2016

Miles Davis birthed cool in 1949 and nearly took it to the grave with him 52 years later. His first venture into hip-hop and last studio album, Doo-Bop, represented the least cool moment for America's icon of coolness itself. By the '90s, Miles' prowess as a trumpeter had only waned from legendary to excellent, but younger musicians had supplanted his position on the stylistic frontier, so his bid at the “street music" of his time came off as corny.